IN JANUARY 2010, over 4,000 individually imported used cars and small utility vehicles of up to 3.5 tons were registered in Slovakia, down 14.55 percent year-on-year.
However used cars imports were 2.77 percent higher than the number of new cars in the first month of this year, the Slovak Automotive Industry Association stated, as reported by the SITA newswire.
The association called this trend unfavourable, as the number of individually imported used cars of these categories, at 78,834 last year, was 12.82 percent lower than the number of new cars at 90,426.
After January registrations, the numbers appeared to be returning to 2008, when individual imports of used cars were 3.81 percent higher than the import of new vehicles.
The association says that the prevalence of imported used cars over new ones has several negative impacts such as the growing average age of the car fleet of Slovakia.
Further impacts include lowered safety, higher operating costs including higher fuel consumption, environmental affects and the cost of scrapping the cars later on.
